FIGHT

Tell me there isn't a market for this.

Call it Versus or something.

Get a big company with a healthy stable of super-characters like DC or Marvel or...DC or Marvel. Take whichever writer and/or artist is available that month and have 'em draw a couple of character names out of a really big hat. Wonder Woman and Bizarro. She-Hulk and Magneto. Batman and Ambush Bug. Whatever. Take which ever two names are drawn and create a solid sixteen pages (we'll go with the Warren Ellis Fell format, just 'cuz I dig it) and do nothing but wall-to-wall fight. No story. No build up to the fight, no reason why they're fighting, nothing. Just fight. Sometimes there's a decisive victory, sometimes there's a humiliating retreat. Sometimes there's a winner, but it's arguable who it may have been. Never, though, a draw. Nothing but a showcase for battle tactics and clever quips. No pesky continuity. Just BAM POW CRASH. Slap a price tag of 2 bucks (cheap) on it and let it be a guilty pleasure, you know. Sometimes, let us aspire to reach lower. For the people.

Ambush Bug.



You fuckin' know it.

STUDY HALL AT NEPTUNE HIGH

Rob Thomas (not the second-rate pop crooner) has an excellent one-stop shop for those interested in the devlopment of a successful TV pilot. At his flash-ridden website, Slave Rats, you can find the original script for the Veronica Mars pilot, along with some development notes and a downloadable commentary (for use with the mostly featureless DVDset).



This current season has been sharp and the intrigue is...intriguing. There's a lot more oging on than in the last season, but as "Cheaty Cheaty Bang Bang" deftly displays, there is a nice balance between the many ongoing threads and presenting a solid one-piece case for Veronica to break (though I imagine that the Casablancas thing isn't over yet either).


And more on the impending Sorkin-ey goodness. Again, sayeth Variety...

Peacock has won an intense bidding war for the next TV show from "The West Wing""The West Wing" duo, an hourlong drama dubbed "Studio 7 on the Sunset Strip" that's set behind-the-scenes at a longrunning Los Angeles-based sketch comedy show (Daily Variety, Oct. 5). It's believed the net has made a rich 13-episode commitment to the Warner Bros. TV project.

Normally, I care not for shows about show business...though as I think about that, it really only applies to crappy sitcoms. No matter, Sorkin could write a show about former plumbers with Alzheimer's in a South Florida retirement home, I'd watch it. Now, about abbreviating that mothful of a title. S7SS? Sx4? Just S7?

MOVING ON UP

Once "Eightball" is done, the next script to be forced out of the rotation will be Alias.Too bad, I was rather pleased with that one, but it's increasingly out of date by the second and probably wasn't the greatest spec choice.

I'm going to gamble a bit on my next spec. I'm going to go ahead and work up something for the only new series to show up in the top 20.



I'm digging Commander-In-Chief quite a bit. Donald Sutherland (who has always been a favorite) is great in the role of the "bad guy." Kyle Secor is always welcome and after The Inside, I have a newfound interest in Peter Coyote. Here's to his impending confirmation. West Wing comparisons are inevitable, but it isn't West Wing and it really isn't trying to be West Wing. It's got a focus on the President's family. The arc of Secor's character trying to find his place is fascinating and the politics are dirtier than anything Bartlet's ever seen.

I'm hoping that as the only new hit, it might gain popularity as a spec read. If it doesn't, I'll just send it in to Scriptapalooza and promptly forget about it.


And I totally missed Chris Carter Day. Sorry, Chris.

HOW I MADE OLD MAN HARKINS TOTALLY WANT TO KILL ME

Microfiction by Michael Patrick Sullivan



I came to terms very early with the possibility that I may well be a jerk, to put it lightly. I accept it. I own it. I am at one with it. So, fuck you if you don’t like it. Asshole.

My self-awareness on this particular subject came about the summer that I was nine years old. As one might expect, a baseball and a fenced in yard was involved. That’s getting ahead of things, though. That was the summer that we moved into the house on Everwood Glen Road. It wasn't until I was thirteen that I decided that that would be my porn star name. Fortunately (for pretty much everyone), it was when I was nineteen that I decided I wouldn’t be a porn star

On the one side was my best friend by default, Alex Bernal. He was my best friend for little other reason than he was the kid next door. On the other side was the default neighborhood crabby guy. Default because whenever I looked at him, he was looking at me and he was scowling like he’d just got back from the gun store in time to watch a democrat rape his dog. I always wanted to ask him what he was looking at, but then he might regard me as a copycat, since he always got there first. With a look like that, poor Old Man Greene down at the end of the road never stood a chance, despite having fifty years on Old Man Harkins.

That’s right, Old Man Harkins was about thirtysomething. Not old by yours or my standards now, but I was nine and this guy was older than my dad. That’s how it works.

One mild summer day, Alex and I were playing baseball in the road. Playing baseball, to us, meant one threw the ball with all the ungodly force that can be summoned forth by a nine-year-old at the other. The other simply had to block the ball with the bat without getting hit and without stepping out of the 3'x 3' chalk square drawn on the road. We may have been chaotic, but even in chaos there is order.

One day, the ball fouled off my bat and landed in Old Man Harkins yard. I ran over to grab it and when I looked up, there was Old Man Harkins, complete with the dog-rape scowl. He told me to drop the ball and get out of his yard. I was frozen in place. I couldn’t feel a thing. Old Man Harkins came down off his front steps and yelled even louder. I couldn’t feel a thing.

“That ball is in my yard, so it’s mine. If you don’t drop my property and get off my property, I’m gonna call the cops. They’re friends of mine so I can get them to treat you like they treat adult tweakers. You ever had a billy club shoved in your poo hole, kid?” His words, not mine. He grabbed me by the arm. I couldn’t feel a thing.

Then I had what I thought was a clever idea. I him in the knees with my baseball bat, making him fall down like a pair of Wal-Mart generic socks. I don’t know what I did more damage with, the aluminum baseball bat on his abdomen or my Keds in his crotch. He managed to crawl back into his house under his own power and call nine-one-one. I never felt a thing.

He told his “cop friend” that a hooker he called in from the city did it after he tried to short "her" twenty bucks. He moved out the next month. I didn’t see him again for eight years.

DRUGS OF CHOICE

"Juice" is getting canned. This last season of Rescue Me hit a lot of the same beats. Already into the second act of a new Rescue Me spec ("Eightball").

And now, about two and half years into Sorkinwithdrawl, comes this sign of hope. Sayeth Variety...


Warner Bros. TV is pulling out its big guns, lining up network offers for new projects from "Friends" co-creator David Crane and "The West Wing" team of Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme.

Blah blah blah blah.

Sorkin is expected to personally deliver the script for his project to networks as early as Friday. A WBTV rep wouldn't comment, but two industry insiders said it's believed Sorkin is focusing his firepower on showbiz, with a behind-the-scenes show set at a "Saturday Night Live"-style skein.

Indeed, two years ago, Sorkin told Charlie Rose that was his plan.

"I hope it's going to be what 'Larry Sanders' did with ... talkshows. I would like to do that with latenight sketch comedy -- with 'Saturday Night Live': in other words, behind the scenes at a network latenight sketch-comedy, edgy show."


Still waiting for his The Farnsworth Invention.

In other concerns, Serenity kicked some mighty space ass. And for the Firefly faithful, slightly disappointed we didn't get a clarification on what Inara was preparing to shoot up in "Bushwacked" (listen to the DVDcommentary).

And Scrye #89 is out. I don't even know what I have in it, but I got paid, so I don't care either.

Now somebody get me some Red Fusion!!!

SEASON PREMIERES (parte the thirde) AND BG

THE WEST WING: "The Ticket"
Written By Debra Cahn

A totally Wingnut geekout teaser. Overall, the episode was as enjoyable as the previous season, in which the show reestablished itself as essentially being a whole new program, after stumbling through the the fifth season looking for focus after Sorkin left. The only disappointment in this episode, to me, was that they appear to have abandoned the documentary direction style that identified the show's rebirth in the sixth year. The bleached colors, deep shots, off-center, chase focusing, blatant handicam stuff was all gone. Things were much more staid and more like the show's early years. Not exactly a bad thing, but I liked that the show gave itself a makeover last year and was able to start getting out from under the intimidating Sorkin shadow. I expect an exciting year and I also expect to be left with a sense of "and all that could have been" when it's over.

VERONICA MARS: "Normal Is The Watchword"
Written By Rob Thomas

Hells, yeah. Continues to be on top of its game. Things are in a state of flux to be sure, even through the course of the episode. My only concern is that between the Logan/Felix plot and the Logan/Casablancas thing and whatever gets underway with the mayor's race, along with Veronica's lovelife, the escalated class war and the end of the episode thing that looks like the contender for the Lily Kane arc plot inheritance...my only concern is that the show may get too soapy. One of my favorite things about the show last year was how it managed the Lily Kane plot along with the stand-alones. The stuff.


COMMANDER IN CHIEF: "Pilot"
Written By Rod Lurie

After Deterrence, The Contender, and Line of Fire, I had certain expectations and they were at least met. It's really easy to compare this show to the West Wing, especially in the early part of the episode, but it becomes clear that this would be a disservice. It clearly isn't trying to be and doesn't want to be. It is its own thing. it rolls a different way. One of those ways is by having a "bad guy" in the person of Donald Sutherland. His last line of the episode after (likely creating) the TelePrompTer failure seems to set him up beeautifully. My only complaint was that the congressinal assembly room looked more like where I got 3 months supervision for speeding.


SMALLVILLE: "Arrival"
Written By Todd Salvkin and Darren Swimmer

If you can't dig on a season premiere of Smallville, then you just don't know how to have fun, do ya?



BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: "Pegasus"
Written By Ronald D. Moore

Not precisely a season finale, but kinda, considering the three month break efore the rest of the second season. Fanfuckingtastic. The show has gone into a really dark place while providing a bizarre bit of BG geekout at the same time with the appearence of the intriguing Michelle (Global Frequency) Forbes as Admiral Cain of the Battlestar Pegasus. A thought-provoking, disturbing home-run from a writer with only one credit they I know of... Truly, the best sci-fi series currently on the air, if not the best anything series currently on the air.